Quotation reference: viewtopic.php?p=190975#p190975



First, let me sort the list:

Below 20k:
- Double Digit Kyu Games by Neil Moffatt

DDK:
- Learn to play Go volume II: The way of the Moving Horse by Janice Kim
- In the Beginning by Ikuro Ishigure

DDK, books I do not know:
- Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game by Richard Bozulich

Kyu:
- How Not to Play Go by Yuan Zhou

Above 13k with preference for SDK:
- Fundamental Principles of Go by Yilun Yang
- 38 Basic Josekis by James Davies

Above 5k:
- Mastering the Basics Volume 5: The Basics of Go Strategy by Richard Bozulich
- Attack and Defense by James Davies
- The Direction of Play by Takeo Kajiwara

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Now let me remove those books that are clearly above or clearly below your currently level 10k ~ 15k apparently on some server (OGS?) or that I do not know. These books remain that you have read and that can be useful for you in principle at the moment:

DDK:
- Learn to play Go volume II: The way of the Moving Horse by Janice Kim
- In the Beginning by Ikuro Ishigure

Kyu:
- How Not to Play Go by Yuan Zhou

Above 13k with preference for SDK:
- Fundamental Principles of Go by Yilun Yang
- 38 Basic Josekis by James Davies

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I think that the two DDK books must have been useful for you and that, now, you should know and apply most of their contents.

How Not to Play Go I have not read but only looked into quickly. My impression: too little contents other than teaching by examples. You can read the book, but afterwards you still need to learn a lot.

Fundamental Principles of Go is useful, most useful maybe for 10k ~ 3k, but is highly selective in what it teaches. You should also read Joseki 1 - Fundamentals (IMO suitable for 18k ~ 3d) to get much more knowledge on joseki fundamentals than you find in the joseki chapter of Fundamental Principles of Go but presented in a roughly similar style of teaching.

38 Basic Joseki can be useful for the most diligent readers and maybe only for them. One must spend 4 hours per joseki (and its variants) and extract all the hidden theory by oneself. If you do not know what theory to look for, discard this book with its outdated selection of josekis. Instead read Easy Learning: Joseki, which has a modern selection, has 72 josekis, makes it easier to learn them (following the rough idea "what cannot be learnt on one page is not included") and provides every important aspect of basic joseki theory explicitly and conveys clearly. Maybe learning josekis is a bit early for you, maybe time is just ripe; I cannot know exactly because your rank is a bit ambiguous. Read more generic books first before studying josekis.

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WRT books, there are different reasons why you do not improve: partly wrong selection, partly you do not study the books properly or do not know how to do so, partly and most importantly a couple of important books are missing in your collection:

- First Fundamentals
- Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go
- Tesuji (Davies)

I could recommend more, however, until you read these three, further speculation of why you do not improve so far is almost futile. As I have said, you need to learn what to think about in a position. These two essential fundamentals books tell you. The tesuji book is another great cause of likely improvement because it shows you important, frequent moves easily overlooked because of being special.